Juran, Joseph Moses

(b. 1904) Gen Mgt

Romanian-born engineer and consultant. Introduced ideas on total quality management to Japan and later, like W. Edwards Deming, to the West. Juran’s methods, first published in Quality Control Handbook (1951), center on building a customerfocused organization through planning, control and improvement, and good people management.

     Juran trained as an electrical engineer, worked for Western Electric in the 1920s, becoming quality manager at their Chicago plant, and later went to work for AT&T. In 1953, he made his first visit to Japan, where he spent two months observing Japanese practices and training managers and engineers in what he called managing for quality. For the next quarter of a century, Juran continued to give seminars on the subject of quality throughout the world. In 1979 he founded the Juran Institute to spread and facilitate the implementation of quality management programs worldwide.